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Obama sits while the UN moves toward a boycott of Israel

December 22, 2016

Obama sits while the UN moves toward a boycott of Israel, Washington Examiner, Anne Bayefsky, December 21, 2016

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With Obama’s U.N. diplomats sitting on their hands while the funding scheme is being hotly debated, American taxpayers can expect to find themselves funding BDS in the very near future, with American businesses caught in the crosshairs. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

[Obama] prefers to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with human rights authorities on the Human Rights Council like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China and Cuba. He is prepared to spend American taxpayer dollars to create a blacklist of companies doing business with the democratic state of Israel instead of the world’s most horrific regimes. A presidency spent courting moral relativism, forsaking U.S. allies, and indulging U.S. adversaries is about to reach its lowest point yet.

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U.S. companies are in for a shock as President Obama takes aim once again at Israel in the final month of his presidency. In the coming days, he is expected to direct his team at the United Nations to vote for U.S. funding of “BDS,” the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign aimed at financially ruining Israel and smearing the companies with which it does business.

The vote concerns the U.N. budget that is currently being negotiated and scheduled to be finalized this week. One of the line items provides funding for the implementation of a Human Rights Council resolution adopted in March. The resolution calls for the creation of a blacklist of companies around the world doing any business, directly or indirectly, connected to Israeli settlements. In effect, it launches a U.N.-sponsored BDS movement. Since the General Assembly holds the purse strings for the Human Rights Council’s operations, the time has come to allocate the money to pay for it.

With Obama’s U.N. diplomats sitting on their hands while the funding scheme is being hotly debated, American taxpayers can expect to find themselves funding BDS in the very near future, with American businesses caught in the crosshairs.

Israeli settlements consist of Jews living peaceful, productive lives on disputed territory whose ownership, by existing agreement, is to be determined through negotiations. This Jewish presence on Arab-claimed territory is offensive to a deeply anti-Semitic enemy that seeks to guarantee that land swapped in an eventual deal to create a Palestinian state will be Jew-free.

In the context of a Palestinian policy of ethnic cleansing, these Jewish farms, enterprises and schools are an “obstacle to peace,” to use the preferred verbiage of the United Nations and the Obama administration. The fact that Jews have repeatedly been moved in advance of a negotiated end to hostilities by their own government for the sake of peace, only to have those hopes dashed time and again, is simply dismissed.

The real obstacle to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict should be obvious after seven decades of non-stop war and terror since the minute of Israel’s creation. Arab rejectionists, on both the battlefield and diplomatic turf, consider all of Israel to be occupied territory and an illegal settlement from 1948 on. Rolling back the clock to the 1967 war is one stop on the way.

Those facts, however, will not intrude on Obama’s BDS calculus. He is an avid supporter of the Human Rights Council, one of the most extreme anti-Israel bodies at the United Nations. Joining the council was one of his first foreign policy initiatives. After serving two consecutive three-year terms starting in 2009, the rules required a one-year hiatus. Hence, the U.S. has not been a council member in 2016.

But attempting to rule from the grave, a week before the U.S. elections, Obama sought and obtained another three-year term to commence Jan. 1, 2017. As a council fan, he has no intention of objecting to funding it.

On the contrary, U.N. budget documents published Dec. 13 indicate that “new requirements” to implement council resolutions and decisions taken over the past year almost double the original $23 million it was allowed to spend for this purpose in the 2016-2017 biennium. Evidently, council devotees took for granted an Obama administration carte blanche.

On Dec. 15, the General Assembly budget committee (the “Fifth Committee”) met to approve the funds for the Human Rights Council, including the funds to create the Council’s blacklist — aka BDS “database.” U.N. documentation indicates that the cost is $138,700 “to pay for one staff member to create the database over a period of 8 months and present a report” to the Human Rights Council in March 2017. In other words, authorization is being backdated to pay for an operation already underway.

To put this in perspective, the council resolution on “Realizing the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl” needs $82,800. “Effects of terrorism on the enjoyment of all human rights” needs $74,700. And a blacklist of companies with ties to Israel needs $138,700.

At the Dec. 15 meeting, the Israeli U.N. representative on the Fifth Committee pleaded with “member states to reject the funding request.” But Obama’s U.N. diplomat — who was present and spoke on an unrelated issue — said nothing. The Palestinian representative floated procedural objections, claiming it was a done deal. Precedent, though, is not on his side.

In 2007, when the U.N. allotted money to fund a second iteration of the racist “anti-racism” Durban conference, the Bush administration stood rock solid on a matter of principle. The U.S. called for the vote in the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee and unequivocally voted against. When it lost, it voted against the entire U.N. biennial budget.

Obama is not that man. He prefers to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with human rights authorities on the Human Rights Council like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China and Cuba. He is prepared to spend American taxpayer dollars to create a blacklist of companies doing business with the democratic state of Israel instead of the world’s most horrific regimes. A presidency spent courting moral relativism, forsaking U.S. allies, and indulging U.S. adversaries is about to reach its lowest point yet.

Categories: BDS, Obama and Israel, UN BDS funding, UN Human RIghts Council, United Nations, United Nations and Israel
Tags: BDS, Obama and Israel, UN BDS funding, UN Human RIghts Council, United Nations, United Nations and Israel

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Trump’s envoy: The new administration ‘won’t tell Israel what policies to adopt’

December 16, 2016

Trump’s envoy: The new administration ‘won’t tell Israel what policies to adopt’, Times of Israel, Eric Cortellessa, December 16, 2016

WASHINGTON — Sitting in a conference room together 13 years ago, David Friedman told his friend Donald Trump that he just purchased an apartment in Jerusalem.

Trump, the real estate tycoon, was immediately curious to know the particulars. “How big was it? How much did it cost?” Friedman recalled him asking, describing the conversation during an interview last month with The Times of Israel. When Friedman cited the price, Trump was surprised.

“That’s really a lot of money,” he responded, according to Friedman’s recollection. “For that kind of money, why wouldn’t you buy a place in East Hampton? Why do you have to go all the way to Israel for a second home?”

The Long Island native’s answer was probably one that the man soon to be president was not expecting. “The world has been fighting over every inch of Jerusalem for the past 3,000 years,” Friedman told Trump. “There’s nobody fighting over East Hampton.”

Trump’s eyes then “opened up,” Friedman said, “and that initiated a decade-plus conversation about Israel.”

Now, in 2016, that exchange seems to have been more fateful than it initially seemed to Friedman, who was announced on Thursday as President-elect Trump’s nominee to be the next US ambassador to Israel.

And the first move Friedman made in that official capacity was to indicate that Trump plans to follow through on his campaign pledge to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, breaking decades of precedent under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and underlining an apparent inclination to do what other presidential candidates have promised but declined to deliver once they took office: recognize the holy city as Israel’s capital.

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An aerial view of the Dome of the Rock, left, in the compound known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City, and the Western Wall, center, the holiest site for Jews, October 2, 2007. (AFP/Jack Guez)

Official US policy has long been to insist that the status of Jerusalem can only be determined through a negotiated settlement between the parties, as both Israelis and Palestinians claim it as their capital.

In a statement Thursday, Friedman, a Hebrew-speaker, declared he was “deeply honored and humbled” that his friend of 15 years selected him to represent America to the Jewish state, and he also left the world with a zinger when he said he looked forward to doing his new job “from the US embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

But Friedman’s declared appetite to move the embassy is not the only reason liberal Jewish organizations have responded to his nomination with something close to horror. The 57-year-old bankruptcy lawyer has also been an outspoken and active supporter of the settlement movement, and has argued that Israel doesn’t face a “demographic threat” to its Jewish character if it fails to separate from the Palestinians.

Friedman serves as president of American Friends of Bet El Institutions, an organization that supports the large West Bank settlement near Ramallah, and over the last year, he has excoriated groups who express criticism of Israel’s settlement policy.

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David Friedman, Donald Trump’s adviser on Israel, talks to Channel 2 News on September 12, 2016. (screen capture: Channel 2)

In June, Friedman accused J Street supporters of being “far worse than kapos” in a column for the right-wing, pro-settlement Israel National News website, using the term for Jews who aided Nazis during the Holocaust. Speaking before the Brookings Institution’s annual Saban Forum earlier this month, he refused to walk back his comparison.

Now that he is slated to become the United States’ top diplomat in Israel — so long as the US Senate confirms his appointment — he will assume one of the most delicate positions in American foreign policy, mediating the US relationship with a close ally in an increasingly unstable region, and after eight tumultuous years of ties between the administration of President Barack Obama and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Last month, Friedman spoke with The Times of Israel about what Trump’s policies and priorities would be toward the Jewish state if he won. Here is what he said.

‘No daylight’ between the US and Israel

When it comes to the US-Israel relationship, Friedman insisted that Trump would represent a sharp break from his predecessor — including in that there would be “no daylight between Israel and America,” a phrase also used in the transition team’s announcement of his selection on Thursday, which indicates a policy of keeping differences out of the public sphere.

“Donald Trump wants to be as supportive of Israel as possible,” Friedman told The Times of Israel. “He doesn’t view Israel as a client state that you just kind of issue directives to. He views Israel as a partner, one of America’s key partners in a global war against Islamic terrorism, so he wants Israel … to be as strong and secure as possible.”

Unlike Obama, who made Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank a fundamental issue of criticism throughout his presidency, Trump will not “put his finger on the scale or tell Israel what policies they should adopt,” Friedman said, adding that his new boss “doesn’t see Israel as in need of any particular correction at this point.”

That principle, he indicated, covers both how Trump will treat the settlement issue and the manner in which Israel seeks to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. The Trump administration will not “dictate to Israel where it can and cannot build” in the West Bank, according to Friedman.

Trump, for his part, has not publicly stated a position on settlements or detailed what kind of a stance he would take. The most common view among Washington’s foreign policy community, and emphatically within the Obama administration, is that, to keep the two-state option alive and ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, the US should try to limit settlement activity to the principal blocs that Israel is expected to retain under any permanent accord.

For his part, Friedman said that a Trump administration “doesn’t see much opportunity for progress until the Palestinians renounce violence and accept Israel as a Jewish state. That’s really a prerequisite.”

One criticism Friedman had of the current president was that Obama saw Israel as “strong” and the Palestinians as “weak,” and thus he believed it was up to the Israelis to take the risks necessary for peace. “Strong vs. weak is less relevant to Trump than the ‘relative conduct of the parties’,” Friedman said.

According to Friedman, Trump was influenced by seeing a video last spring of a stage production put on at a Hamas-affiliated school in Gaza. “Half the kids were dressed up as Israeli soldiers or traditional garb and the other half were dressed up as shahids, and the kids playing terrorists took their fake knives and stabbed all the Jews,” Friedman said of the film. “Fake blood poured on the stage, and the parents all applauded this. In a first grade class.”

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A young Palestinian girl attacks ‘Israeli soldiers’ with a knife in a play held in Gaza as part of the ‘Palestine Festival for Children and Education,’ April 2016 (Channel 2 news)

Trump, he said, sees that kind of incitement as “unacceptable and an insoluble impediment to peace.”

But didn’t Trump say he wanted to be neutral?

In February 2016, then-Republican presidential hopeful Trump called Israeli-Palestinian peace “probably the toughest agreement of any kind to make,” but vowed to give it “one hell of a shot.”

He also pledged he would do that by being “sort of a neutral guy,” when pressed by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough over whether he ascribed fault to either side for failing to reach an accord. “A lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault is it,” he said. “I don’t think it helps.”

Trump took immediate heat for this promise on the campaign trail, and seemed to indicate a walk-back during his speech at the 2016 AIPAC Policy Conference and elsewhere, but he has not explicitly rescinded this posture.

Friedman argued, however, that his language has been misunderstood. “What he was really referring to was trying to sponsor negotiations that would take place without preconditions,” he said. “That was what he viewed as neutrality, and that’s frankly been the view of the Israeli government for some time.”

Friedman cited Obama’s demand in his first term that Netanyahu place a moratorium on all West Bank settlement construction, as a trust-building measure, to be “an example of the absence of neutrality, but it’s in favor of the Palestinians against the Israelis.”

And what about that two-state solution?

As one of Trump’s top two Israel advisers at the time, along with Jason Dov Greenblatt, Friedman said the candidate had not yet decided exactly how he’d go about handling Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, but that he would be open to new ideas, including embracing avenues outside the two-state framework.

Friedman stated that, in his discussions with Trump, “a two-state solution is not a priority. I don’t think he is wed to any particular outcome. A two-state solution is a way, but it’s not the only way.”

Unlike the last three presidents, who have tried to push both parties into negotiating a compromise, Trump will let the Israel make its determinations without pressure from the US, said Friedman.

“A Trump administration will try to be helpful with the Israelis bringing stability to the region, to make it as quiet as possible, as peaceful as possible, and ultimately to come up with a long-term solution,” he said. “As far as what that solution is, Trump will be guided by the Israelis’ view, very much so, and will not be seeking to impose any particular path upon the Israeli government.”

Categories: David Friedman, Israeli security, Israeli settlements, J Street, Obama and Israel, President Elect Trump, Trump agenda, Trump and Israel, Trump's ambassador to Israel, Two state solution
Tags: David Friedman, Israeli security, Israeli settlements, J Street, Obama and Israel, President Elect Trump, Trump agenda, Trump and Israel, Trump's ambassador to Israel, Two state solution

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White House “Champion” Blasts Muslims Who Talk to Any Pro-Israel Jews

December 7, 2016

White House “Champion” Blasts Muslims Who Talk to Any Pro-Israel Jews, Investigative Project on Terrorism, December 7, 2016

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Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour took to Twitter Nov. 22 with a quick, venting post: “You know what I can’t stand? Bitter people. That’s all.”

Sarsour spoke at the annual American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) conference three days later. Evidently, she can’t stand herself.

Sarsour, who describes herself as a “racial justice and civil rights activist,” lashed out at Jews who extended a hand of friendship and solidarity over concerns that increasing hostility toward Muslims in America might lead to draconian government action. And she lashed out at fellow Muslims who accepted the gesture and joined in a new inter-faith dialogue.

Why the bitterness?

The Jews at issue support the state of Israel, support its existence and its vitality. Sarsour wants none of that.

“We have limits to the type of friendships that we’re looking for right now,” Sarsour told the AMP conference, “and I want to be friends with those whom I know have been steadfast, courageous, have been standing up and protecting their own communities, those who have taken the risk to stand up and say – we are with the Palestinian people, we unequivocally support BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctioning Israel] when it comes to Palestinian human rights and have been attacked viciously by the very people who are telling you that they’re about to stand on the front line of the Muslim registry program. No thank you, sisters and brothers.”

It’s a message that fit right in at the AMP conference. AMP claims its “sole purpose is to educate the American public and media about issues related to Palestine and its rich cultural and historical heritage.” But in practice, the group has defended Hamas and its leaders admit they seek “to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

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Sarsour, a media darling honored by the Obama White House as a “Champion of Change” and a high-profile surrogate for Bernie Sanders‘ failed Democratic presidential nomination campaign, seems to strike a different tone in public appearances. Her biography says she is “most known for her intersectional coalition work and building bridges across issues, racial, ethnic and faith communities.” That clearly wasn’t her intent at the AMP conference.

She acknowledges there’s a rift among Islamists about how hard a line to draw in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet she was intent on pouring gasoline on the fire.

The “cracks in our community” are so wide, she said, they’re visible to “right-wing Zionists, Islamophobes, white supremacists.”

“They know where we’re divided. They know that we’re segregated,” she said. “So they, we could easily be targeted when we’re a fragmented community. But if we were a strong, united, steadfast community that stood up for each other first and foremost, you’d better believe that no opposition would ever be trying to take us down, because we’d be too big, too strong and too united.”

Some of her comments likely were directed at Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt. Should a Trump administration create a registry for Muslims, an idea that does not seem to be on the table, Greenblatt recently pledged that “this proud Jew will register as Muslim.”

Sarsour not only rebuked the gesture, she cast Muslims who might respond more positively as sellouts of the Palestinian cause. Cooperation and solidarity gestures should only be reserved for those who share the depth of her hatred toward Israel, she said.

“I am tired of Muslims working towards acceptance and not respect of our communities. And I’m also tired of the Muslims willing to sell Palestine just for a little acceptance and nod from the white man and white power in these United States of America,” Sarsour said.

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Sarsour, in the red hijab, poses with others at the White House Eid celebration.

Despite this extreme stance, Sarsour is a rising star among American Islamist activists. She has been welcomed to the White House at least 10 times during President Obama’s tenure, most recently in July for a celebration of the Muslim Eid holiday. Last year, a glowing New York Times profile described her as “a Brooklyn Homegirl in a Hijab.”

“But the most apparent thing about her voice is that it is exceedingly Brooklyn,” the story said. “She says ‘swag’ instead of ‘charisma.’ (‘Mr. B. has swag …) She calls her father, a Palestinian immigrant in his 60s, ‘Pops.’ Like the actress Rosie Perez in a hijab, Ms. Sarsour has perfected her delivery of the head-swaying ‘Oh no you dih-int’ and pronounces the word ‘Latino’ like, well, a Latino.”

Sarsour also says “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” and all-but accused the CIA of faking an attempted terrorist attack.

Those statements didn’t make the Times profile. And they didn’t prompt the Obama administration to reconsider the wisdom of elevating Sarsour’s clout with repeated White House access.

In February, just over a year after terrorists massacred the staff at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, saying they “avenged the Prophet,” Sarsour told a Council on American-Islamic Affairs (CAIR) banquet in Chicago that she would not stand with the victims. The magazine was “a bigot and a racist” for publishing caricatures of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, she said. The images served to “vilify my faith, dehumanize my community [and] demoralize my prophet.”

Building off Sarsour’s rejection of anyone who breaks bread with Zionists, former AMP New York President Raja Abdulhaq defined the BDS movement – not as a tool to lead to peaceful negotiations – but as way to break Israel into total surrender.

“The rights are non-negotiable. And that’s the whole point of BDS, is that we demand, we want to apply pressure,” Abdulhaq said, “not sit down in a negotiated setting and figure out what you can give up so that I can give up something in return, because what you’re essentially doing is you’re asking the other side – give up your illegality, stop your illegality and I will give up my rights. What kind of negotiation is that? No, I demand my rights, and you stop your illegality. And that’s the whole basis of BDS.”

Among the non-negotiable “rights” Abdulhaq says AMP and the BDS movement insist upon is the so-called “right of return” for Palestinians. That would lead to a huge influx of Palestinians into Israel, swamping the country demographically and ending its existence as a Jewish homeland.

That’s just fine with conference speaker Lamis Deek, an attorney and board memberfor CAIR’s New York chapter. She repeatedly described Israelis as “serial killers” intent on ethnic cleansing.

“There is a serial killer in our home,” Deek said. “And what do you do when you are confronted with a serial killer, right? You protect yourself. You protect your family. You scream for help. And you expect that when you scream for help from a serial killer everybody is gonna come to your aid, they’re gonna come protect and defend you. Right? You don’t expect somebody to intervene on behalf of the serial killer … and say ‘the serial killer has some rights, let us tell you about the rights the serial killer has’ as he begins to kill you. Right?”

Like Sarsour, Deek expressed frustration at Muslims who accept other viewpoints.

“Nothing has set back the Palestinian movement in the U.S. more than demands by people who want to work and focus their efforts on [Washington] D.C., by their demands that we tame our demands for Palestine,” she said.

Dawud Walid, CAIR’s Michigan director, echoed the message about Muslim groups who appear too accommodating. “If these organizations claim to represent the Muslim community,” he said, “then when we see them doing things that go outside of the mainstream of the (UI word) of our community, we need to hold them accountable, and if they continue to step outside of the boundaries, then we should withdraw our support and make that very public.”

Walid has acknowledged that his employer, which works hard to project an image as a civil rights organization, really sees itself as “defenders of the Palestinian struggle.”

Deek, meanwhile, spoke of the harm done to the Palestinian cause by the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords. While that initiative may have given Palestinians autonomy, it came at the cost of unity, she said.

It’s not clear what she means. But, since 2006, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has governed the West Bank while Hamas controls Gaza.

Oslo also made it more difficult to engage in terrorism – what Deek calls “armed resistance.”

“Now armed resistance, self-defense, has been the only direct challenge to Zionist colonial expansion. Nothing else is a direct challenge,” she told the AMP conference. “Everything else is an indirect challenge, right? Pressure – economic pressure, diplomatic pressure. So this national united Palestinian body was able – by supporting the resistance – was able to be part of directly impacting and influencing Zionist policy.”

Advocating more Palestinian violence is consistent for an AMP gathering. The organization’s message never mentions peaceful co-existence. An Investigative Project on Terrorism investigation found connections between at least five AMP officials and speakers and the defunct Hamas support network called the “Palestine Committee.”

During the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, AMP’s then-National Campus Coordinator Taher Herzallah posted images of wounded Israelis, calling them “The most beautiful site (sic) in my eyes.” He defended indiscriminate Hamas rocket fire at Israeli civilian communities as “an audible cry for help” and “an act of resistance.”

Two clear messages emerged from the AMP conference. “Resistance” is better than renouncing violence and seeking peace. All Muslims who might disagree, even if they see eye-to-eye on other issues, are no longer welcome.

These extreme stands came from speakers who enjoy prominent political profiles and high-level contacts.

Sarsour is right about one thing. There is a rift in her community. She and her AMP panelists are the ones widening it.

Categories: "Champion of Change", "Muslim Registry", American Muslims for Palestine, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism in America, Boycott of Israel, Discrimination against Muslims, Donald Trump and Islamists, Donald Trump and Israel, Islamic hatred of others, Islamist organizations, Islamists and Israel, Islamists and Jews, Islamists in America, Linda Sarsour, Obama and Islamists, Obama and Israel, Palestinians
Tags: American Muslims for Palestine, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism in America, Boycott of Israel, Discrimination against Muslims, Donald Trump and Islamists, Donald Trump and Israel, Islamic hatred of others, Islamist organizations, Islamists and Israel, Islamists and Jews, Islamists in America, Linda Sarsour, Obama and Islamists, Obama and Israel, Palestinians

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Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem

November 30, 2016

Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel National News, Dr. Max Singer, November 30, 2016

(Please see also, Jimmy Carter wants UN to impose a Palestinian state by fiat, with US recognition. — DM)

The US State Department, which has always opposed moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, understands very well that any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians will leave at least western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and part of sovereign Israel. So why will the State Department nevertheless advise President-Elect Donald Trump not to fulfill his promise to move the embassy?

Moving the embassy to Israel’s actual capital would provoke Arab anger at the US and lead to protests that might turn violent. The foreign policy establishment wishes to prevent this result and protect America’s status as an “honest broker.” It therefore continues to insist that because Jerusalem’s ultimate status can only be determined by agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and that it would be wrong for the US to “prejudge” the outcome by acting on the truth that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem.

This is a perfect example of the kind of politically-correct establishment pettifogging that Trump campaigned against. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is a low-cost action that he could take as soon as he is inaugurated, and one of the easiest and quickest changes in policy that he could implement. The new US consulate in Jerusalem was built with security features that would be needed for an embassy, so the move could be started almost immediately, without any prejudice to the Palestinian claim to eastern Jerusalem.

The State Department’s insistence on the diplomatic fiction that none of Jerusalem is part of Israel helps preserve the Palestinian hope that, someday, Israel will be forced to give up its capital and will be destroyed as the independent, democratic Jewish state.

That Palestinian hope is the main obstacle to peace. The Palestinians can only make peace when their community – and perhaps the Arab world of which it is a part – comes to understand that international pressure will never force Israel to acquiesce in its own destruction. One of the best ways the US can demonstrate that it will never consent to the Palestinian destruction of Israel is for Washington to stop ignoring blatant Palestinian lies that work against peace.

There is another way that an American truth-telling strategy could encourage peace. Palestinian leadership now tells its people – and most of them believe – that compromise with Israel would be immoral because Israel is a colonial invader that stole Palestinian land by force. By that argument, Israel has no moral claim to any of the land, and any concession to it would be dishonorable.

But Israel is descended from Jewish kingdoms that ruled parts of the land for centuries in ancient times. It too has a traditional base for moral claims to the territory (in addition to legal claims from the League of Nations mandate). If the Palestinians recognized this truth, they would see that compromise between the two groups, each of which has valid claims to the land, could be an honorable way to end the dispute and not a cowardly yielding to force.

To undermine this moral basis for compromise with Israel, Palestinian leadership flatly denies any ancient Jewish connection to the land. They claim, for example, that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount from which Jesus could have chased the money-changers. Yet their own history belies this claim. In 1929, the Supreme Moslem Council in Jerusalem, in its guide to the Mount, wrote: “[The Temple Mount’s] identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”

The US may not be able to induce the Palestinian Authority to stop inciting its constituents and teaching its children to hate Israel. But there are ways in which the US can expose and eventually defeat Palestinian lies that work against peace; ways that do not require getting agreement from anyone.

Exploring these new approaches would constitute a striking change in diplomatic direction. There are many examples of the West rejecting truth on behalf of the Palestinians and their Arab supporters. For example, some Western countries went along with the recent denial by UNESCO of any ancient Jewish connection to the land of Israel. The US politely ignores the Palestinian lie that there was never a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.

If the US consistently tells the truth about the ancient Jewish presence in Palestine, and publicly refuses to swallow the Palestinians’ false and anti-peace denials of history, the Palestinian leadership will not for long be able to keep the truth from their people, or at least from the large educated class.

The US has followed a policy of avoiding truths that are painful or embarrassing to the Arabs for at least 50 years. It hasn’t worked. Maybe it is time to try the strategy of telling the truth. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, in accordance with the long-standing congressional position, would be a good way for President Trump to make a start on a truth-telling strategy – as well as to fulfill a campaign promise.

Categories: Israel, Jerusalem, Obama and Israel, Palestinians, Trump and Israel, U.S. Embassy, United Nations
Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Obama and Israel, Palestinians, Trump and Israel, U.S. Embassy, United Nations

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Iran, Hamas and the Dance of Death

November 23, 2016

Iran, Hamas and the Dance of Death, Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, November 23, 2016

It now appears that the Obama Administration’s failed policies in the Middle East have increased the Iranians’ appetite, such that they are convinced that they can expand their influence to the Palestinians as well.

Iran has one goal only: to eliminate the “Zionist entity” and undermine moderate and progressive Arabs and Muslims.

“Relations between Iran and Hamas are currently undergoing revitalization, and are moving in the right direction,” announced Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official. He went on to explain that “moving in the right direction” means that Iran would “continue to support the resistance” against Israel.

Hamas and Iran have no meaningful ideological or strategic differences. Both share a common desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. Iran expects results: Hamas is to use the financial and military support to resume attacks on Israel and “liberate all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

As far as Iran is concerned, there is nothing better than having two proxy terror organizations on Israel’s borders — Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

The biggest losers, once again, will be President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Israel’s presence in the West Bank has thus far thwarted Iran’s repeated attempts to establish bases of power there.

The Iranians and Hamas are exploiting the final days of the Obama Administration to restore their relations and pave the way for Tehran to step up its meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians in particular and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general.

Emboldened by the nuclear deal framework with the world powers, Iran has already taken the liberty of interfering in the internal affairs of other Arabs, particularly the Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenites and some Gulf countries.

It now appears that the Obama Administration’s failed policies in the Middle East have increased the Iranians’ appetite, such that they are convinced that they can expand their influence to the Palestinians as well.

Thanks to the civil war in Syria, relations between Hamas and Iran have been strained over the past few years. Hamas’s refusal to support the regime of Bashar Assad — Iran’s chief ally in the region — has led the Iranians to suspend financial and military aid to the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip. However, recent signs indicate that Iran and Hamas are en route to a kind of Danse Macabre — a move that will undoubtedly allow Tehran to become a major player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Iran used to funnel money to Hamas because the terrorist group shares Iran’s desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. Relations between Iran and Hamas foundered a few years back, when Hamas leaders refused to support the Iranian-backed Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad. Pictured above: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal (left) confers with Iranian “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei, in 2010. (Image source: Office of the Supreme Leader)

This, of course, bodes badly for any future peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Iran has one goal only: to eliminate the “Zionist entity” and undermine moderate and progressive Arabs and Muslims.

The new US administration would do well to take very seriously Iran’s comeback to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because of its implications not only concerning prospects for peace, but also because it means that this will lead to an upsurge in violence and terror attacks against Israel.

Proof of Iran’s renewed effort to infiltrate the Palestinian arena was provided this week by statements made by a senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, who is in charge of the Islamist movement’s “external affairs.” Asked about Hamas’s relations with Iran, Hamdan was quoted as saying that he had good reason to be optimistic.

“Relations between Iran and Hamas are currently undergoing revitalization, and are moving in the right direction,” Hamdan announced. He went on to explain that “moving in the right direction” means that Iran would “continue to support the resistance” against Israel:

“Relations between Iran and Hamas extend over a period of 25 years. Undoubtedly, any flaw in this relationship has a negative impact. But this relationship is capable of renewing itself. This is a relationship that is based on supporting the resistance and the Palestinian cause.”

In reality, Hamas and Iran have no meaningful ideological or strategic differences. Both share a common desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. The two entities are also committed to an “armed struggle” against Israel, and are vehemently opposed to any compromise with it.

The crisis between the two sides over the civil war in Syria is no more than a minor, tactical dispute. When it comes to the real agenda, such as destroying Israel and launching terror attacks, Iran and Hamas continue to be in total alignment.

Another sign of the apparent rapprochement between Iran and Hamas came in the form of reports that the Islamist movement has appointed a new leader in the Gaza Strip with close ties to Tehran. According to the reports, Emad El Alami, who previously served as Hamas’s first emissary to Tehran, has been entrusted with temporarily replacing Ismail Haniyeh as the ruler of the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh has in recent months relocated from the Gaza Strip to Qatar. At this stage, it remains unclear when and if Haniyeh will return to the Gaza Strip. Some Palestinians have surmised that Haniyeh may replace the Doha-based Khaled Mashaal as head of the Hamas “Political Bureau.” If this happens, then El Alami, who is regarded by many Palestinians as Iran’s agent, will become the permanent de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip.

El Alami’s rise to power will undoubtedly further facilitate Iran’s ambition to become a significant player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the gates of the Gaza Strip. This means that Hamas can expect more cash and weapons to enter Gaza in the coming weeks and months. Such an influx would significantly increase the likelihood of another war between Hamas and Israel. Iran’s millions will not be used by Hamas for building schools and hospitals, or providing desperately needed jobs for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Nor will the Iranian-supplied weapons be stored in Hamas warehouses and tunnels, or used in military parades.

Iran expects results: Hamas is to use the financial and military support to resume attacks on Israel and “liberate all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

When Hamas leaders talk about Iranian support for the Palestinian “resistance,” they mean suicide bombings, rocket attacks and other forms of terrorism. They are saying with unmistakable clarity that they seek a resumption of Iranian support for the “resistance” — not for the tens of thousands of unemployed and impoverished Palestinians living under the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. The well-being of the Palestinians living under its rule is the last thing on Hamas’s mind.

The Iranians, for their part, appear to be extremely eager to resume their role as enablers and funders of any group that vows to eliminate Israel. As far as Iran is concerned, there is nothing better than having two proxy terror organizations on Israel’s borders — Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

Iran is already backing other terror groups in the Gaza Strip, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al-Sabireen. But these are tiny groups compared to Hamas, which has tens of thousands of gunmen and a strong military group, Ezaddin Al Kassam. And there is nothing to prevent Iran from extending its control to the Gaza Strip through Hamas, especially in the wake of the Obama Administration’s policy of appeasing not only the Iranians, but also the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the coming months, Hamas is scheduled to hold secret elections to elect a replacement for Khaled Mashaal. Mashaal’s departure from the scene is also set to facilitate Iran’s effort to infiltrate the Gaza Strip. The three candidates who are seen as potential successors to Mashaal — Ismail Haniyeh, Musa Abu Marzouk and Yehya Al Sinwar — have all pledged to improve their movement’s ties with Iran.

The biggest losers, once again, will be President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

PA officials continue to express deep concern over Iran’s meddling in Palestinian affairs, especially its financial and military support for terror groups in the Gaza Strip and even some parts of the West Bank. Yet Israel’s presence in the West Bank has thus far thwarted Iran’s repeated attempts to establish bases of power there. Abbas has no choice but to work with Israel if he wishes to prevent Iran and its supporters from overthrowing his regime, and perhaps dragging him to the center of Ramallah and hanging him as a traitor.

Abbas and his senior aides are nonetheless plenty worried about Iran’s increased efforts to infiltrate the Palestinian arena. At a lecture in Bahrain last week, PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat sounded an alarm bell when he said:

“Iran has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. Iran must respect the particularity of our country. We hope that Iran will focus on placing Palestine back on the map and not intervene through this or that group.”

But this warning is likely to fall on deaf ears in the waning Obama Administration, which obviously no longer shares the widespread concern among Arabs and Palestinians that Iran remains a major threat to stability and security in the region, including Israel. Perhaps the new US administration will see Iran and its machinations a bit more clearly. The alternative is allowing Iran and its proxy terror groups further to drench the region in blood.

Categories: Hamas, Iran and Hamas, Iran and Israel, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Obama and Iran, Obama and Iran scam, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Trump and Iran, Trump and Israel
Tags: Hamas, Iran and Hamas, Iran and Israel, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Obama and Iran, Obama and Iran scam, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Trump and Iran, Trump and Israel

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Israel Puts the Spike Missile on its Apache Helicopters

November 17, 2016

Israel Puts the Spike Missile on its Apache Helicopters, Gatestone Institute, Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen, November 17, 2016

For this reason, Israel concluded that the U.S. under Obama was not a reliable supplier of either helicopters or missiles.

Israel’s Spike is superior to the Hellfire. It has longer range, making it safer to use against an enemy that possesses shoulder-fired ground to air missiles.

Worse yet, despite Saudi Arabia’s horrible bombing performance in Yemen, the U.S. continues to sell billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and has stepped up shipments of munitions.

The Spike is a better option than the Hellfire and safer to use, which is why 25 nations now use the missile and 25,000 or more have been produced.

Sometimes when decisions do not work out exactly as intended, they work out just fine.

In the midst of Operation Protective Edge — Israel’s response to 182 Hamas rockets and mortarsfired at Israeli towns and villages in the first week of July 2014 — the Obama administration accused Israel of “heavy handed battlefield tactics,” including the use of artillery instead of precision-guided munitions. U.S. President Barack Obama halted the supply of Hellfire missilesand announced that all military equipment supplied to Israel would be vetted individually in the White House, instead of shipped, according to prior agreements, by the Pentagon to Israel.

The President, it appears, had been reading wild press stories about the damage to Gaza — which ultimately turned out to be concentrated in areas in which Hamas was stockpiling munitions and rockets and conducting command and control operations, which included firing more than 2,700 rockets and missiles during the rest of July. Israel struck an UNRWA-administered school, prompting cries of outrage, but UNRWA later admitted that it covered up that Hamas had used the school for military operations.

The Hellfire decision was especially ironic because it is a precision munition, generally less broadly damaging than bombs dropped from aircraft. The Hellfire can be fired from airplanes, drones and helicopters.

Ironic, too, because the United States has used Hellfire missiles against terrorists — often without the permission of the countries in which the terrorists were killed. A Hellfire was used to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn, American citizens, in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was designated a terrorist, and Kahn the editor of the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire, but U.S. law may have been violated by their assassination.

Israel carried the Hellfire on its Apache helicopters — and the story of Israel’s purchase of 42 Apaches is also one of difficulty. In 2009, the Obama administration blocked the delivery of six of the Apaches to Israel, on the grounds Israel might use them in Gaza. U.S.-Israel military cooperation on the Apache was made difficult and as Obama’s dislike of Israel and Israeli security policy increased, the Hellfire on the Apache became the White House target.

For this reason, Israel concluded that the U.S. under Obama was not a reliable supplier of either helicopters or missiles. After the 2014 operation in Gaza, Israel turned to the Israeli manufacturer Rafael, developer of the hugely successful and potent Spike anti-tank missile. Rafael was to adapt Spike technology to the Apache, while the helicopter retained Hellfire capability at the same time.

The decision was fairly easy, because Israel was already working on adopting the Spike to helicopters in Europe, where the Spike is a big hit. Spain has already installed the Spike ER version on its Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters. Others in Europe and Asia are doing the same.

2048

A Tiger attack helicopter carrying two racks of Israeli Spike ER missiles. (Image source: Airbus Helicopters)

Israel’s Spike is superior to the Hellfire. It has longer range, making it safer to use against an enemy that possesses shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles known as MANPADS. Since Benghazi, sophisticated MANPADS, including US-made Stingers (the same as were used in Afghanistan in “Charlie Wilson’s War”), have been smuggled from Libya and are now in the hands of terrorists including Hezbollah and ISIS.

The Spike features a non-line-of-sight firing capability, making it a more flexible weapon. But one feature of Spike that is entirely missing in Hellfire is that the operator can change target in mid-course or even destroy the weapon in flight if the target turns out to be wrong — a capability that is not trivial. During the Yugoslav war, NATO aircraft on a number of occasions hit targets that should have been aborted. One such incident occurred during an attack to knock out the Grdelica Bridge near Belgrade on April 12, 1999. When the missile was launched, the bridge was empty; when it struck some minutes later a civilian train was crossing and destroyed. On May 1, 1999 in Kosovo, NATO planes hit a bridge at Luzane where, again, a school bus came along after the missile was launched, killing many school children.

The Obama administration should never have cut off the sale of a precision weapon such as the Hellfire in the middle of battle. It was bad policy: it signaled the unreliability of the U.S. at that time as an ally. Worse yet, despite Saudi Arabia’s horrible bombing performance in Yemen, the U.S. continues to sell the Saudis billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, and has stepped up shipments of munitions. So Israelis have reason to believe that America failed her at a moment when it counted.

But there is a silver lining. The Spike is a better option than the Hellfire and safer to use, which is why 25 nations now use the missile and 25,000 or more have been produced.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Israeli military, Israeli technology, Obama and Hamas, Obama and Israel, Spike missile
Tags: Defense of Israel, Israeli Military, Israeli technoloy, Obama and Hamas, Obama and Israel, Spike missile

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Obama’s Secret Muslim List

November 2, 2016

Obama’s Secret Muslim List, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, November 2, 2016

muslist

Like a warped Islamic version of Santa Claus, Obama had a secret Muslim list. And his people checked it at least twice. The list was of Muslims who were prospects for important jobs and appointments.

It included a Muslim who had described Israel as an “Apartheid State,” Iran’s “go-to guy in New York financial circles” and a number of figures linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was the ultimate religious test from an administration that had vocally rejected them.

Obama had claimed that having religious tests for migration was “shameful” and “not American.”

“When I hear folks say that, well maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims,” he huffed from Turkey. His Muslim host country was run by a bigoted sponsor of Islamic terror.

“We don’t have religious tests,” he insisted.

Except we did and we do. Obama also had religious tests. His religious tests excluded Christians and favored Muslims. That is why his Syrian refugees were between 98% and 99% Muslim with only 68 Christians and 24 Yazidis, even though both groups are real victims of the Muslim religious war.

Syria is 10% Christian and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Yet only 68 have made it past Obama’s iron curtain. That’s either an Islamic religious test or the world’s greatest coincidence.

But would the man who piously lectured us on the evils of religious tests really have a religious test?

Of course he would.

The hacked emails include a list of “Muslim American candidates for top Administration jobs, sub-cabinet jobs, and outside boards/agencies/policy committees.”

The list was sent to John Podesta who headed the Obama-Biden Transition Project. It had been put together by a woman who had sat on the Commission on International Religious Freedom, but boasted that she had, “Excluded those with some Arab American background but who are not Muslim (e.g., George Mitchell). Many Lebanese Americans, for example, are Christian.”

How “shameful.” How “not American” of Barack Hussein Obama.

“Most who are listed appear to be Muslim-American, except that a handful (where noted) may be Arab American but of uncertain religion (esp. Christian),” she assured Podesta.

Religious tests are only out of line when they exclude Muslims. Not when they exclude Christians.

That’s the pattern which emerged from the Obama-Biden Transition Project and Obama’s refugee policy. There has been a clear pattern of administration bias against Christians and Jews. And in favor of Muslims. That bias has been obvious in a foreign policy which backed Islamic supremacist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood over more moderate governments at the expense of non-Muslim populations.

This policy led to the displacement and death of countless Christians, and the persecution of entire communities, by an administration which then denied safe harbor to the victims of its own policies.

Administration bias replicated that same bigoted policy at home when it favored Islamic candidates.

Obama appointed Farooq Kathwari, the first name on the “Muslim list” sent to Podesta, to the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

The “Muslim list” email had warned that, “Kathwari’s then 19-year-old American-educated son Irfan (aka Imran), was killed in 1992 fighting Jihad against the Russians in Afghanistan.” The actions of his son, who may have been with the Mujahedeen but was also apparently outraged over India’s defense of Kashmir, is of less relevance than Kathwari’s appearance at an ISNA conference and another conference co-sponsored by the Muslim Students Association. Both groups are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

He co-chaired the American Muslim Task Force whose members included Salam Al-Marayati, Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which has defended Hamas and Hezbollah, Yahya Basha, president of the American Muslim Council and a former board member of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and assorted other Islamists. Its report complained that Muslims were inhibited from donating to “charities” run by Islamic terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. Yahya Basha also appeared on Obama’s Muslim list.

Also listed was MPAC’s Aslam Abdullah who had claimed that “Zionists,” Christians and Hindus were behind the War on Terror. He had described Israel as an “apartheid state” and a “racist state.”

The second Muslim on the list, Cyrus Amir-Mokri, was named assistant treasury secretary. He became the first Iranian to be named to such a high position and defended the Iran nuclear sellout. Mokri attended a meeting with members of the Iran Lobby at the White House. He also reportedly advised Obama on Iranian sanctions.

Obama had famously told NASA boss Bolden that one of his three tasks at the space agency was Muslim self-esteem. But Bolden almost didn’t make it in. The Muslim list included two alternative candidates for NASA administrator. One of them, Dr. Charles Elachi of JPL was dismissed as “possibly Christian.” Indeed Elachi, who grew up admiring John Wayne and believes that American success is possible because it isn’t “held back by the long-standing, ingrained systems and beliefs found in the Middle East” would have been a rather poor fit. But it is deeply shameful and un-American that his potential NASA appointment questioned his religion. That is an inappropriate religious test that Obama must apologize for.

The other name on the list however is Firouz Naderi, an Iranian board member of the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans which advocated in support of the Iran nuke sellout.

Eboo Patel, whose name would frequently appear on lists of Islamists in the Obama administration, first made an appearance on the Muslim List. Despite his Islamist ties, he got the posting at the Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships. Also listed were Keith Ellison, Andre Carson and Larry Shaw. Shaw sits on the board of CAIR.

Dilawar Syed, the first name to appear on the list of possible appointments, was named to Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Syed is a co-founder and chair of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Victory Fund which has come out for Hillary Clinton. The secret Muslim list describes him as “animated by policy issues relating to the Muslim world.” A similar description is appended to the bio for Kashif Zafar who served as a Co-Chair of the South Asian American Leadership Council at the DNC.

Also on the list was Hamid Biglari. Bloomberg described Biglari as “Iran’s Man in New York” and as the Iranian president’s “go-to guy in New York financial circles.” Biglari was a key Iran Lobby figure.

The recently revealed secret Muslim list is deeply troubling. There should be no religious test for political appointments. Yet Obama had one. And his people sought to screen out Christians and favor Muslims.

This represents behavior that is in Obama’s own words, “shameful” and “not American.” One can’t help but conclude that, based on his own principles, Obama is shameful and not American.

Categories: Obama and Christians, Obama and Iran scam, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic refugees, Obama and Islamists, Obama and Israel, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, Obama's America, Religious tests
Tags: Obama and Christians, Obama and Iran scam, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic refugees, Obama and Islamists, Obama and Israel, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, Obama's America, Religious tests

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If you love America and Israel, vote against the system

October 31, 2016

If you love America and Israel, vote against the system, Israel National News, Naomi Ragen, October 31, 2016

I can certainly see why women, including Jewish women, would prefer a seemingly well-spoken, mature senior stateswoman, to a brash, loud-mouthed political neophyte who has made so many off-handed offensive locker-room comments about women.

This would be your instinct.

How lovely, how easy, it would be then, to vote in a woman running against a man like that.

And how disastrously wrong.

I’ll give you the facts, but honestly, past experience does not leave me hopeful. Eight years ago, to tried to deter people from following their instinct
and voting in Barack Hussein Obama, the most anti-Israel president in U.S. history. But even after I made people aware he spent twenty years in an
anti-Semitic church, and was being advised by the likes of Rashid Khalidi, Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor), pro-Hamas negotiator Robert Malley, UN Ambassador Samantha Power (who once suggested using American troops to guard Palestinians from Israelis), most Jews still voted for Obama.

Why? because they were brainwashed by lying, anti-Israel media to the extent that their instinct told them that what was important above all else was to elect a Black man: Their “instinct” told them how noble, how liberal to cast that vote! And if they didn’t, they were racists. In fact, many people lambasted me for writing “Barack Hussein Obama”. “Hussein,” why did you write that!!

Because it was his name, I answered.I wonder how that worked out for them. I can tell you how it worked out for us in Israel: our biggest enemy and the world’s foremost supporter of terror is now unimpeded in its rush towards nuclear weapons to destroy the next six million Jews.

I wonder sometimes, how these voters live with these consequences. And now, Barack Hussein Obama and all the EXACT SAME PEOPLE are urging you to vote for Hillary Clinton, who proudly bragged online that she was the true author of the Iran deal, making you feel like a racist, a woman-hater, an idiot, and worse if you don’t.

Repentance is being in exactly the same situation and acting differently. For those who continue down the same road, there is no hope.

So, I’m going to give you some reasons to take a different path. For the sake of the safety and security of the State of Israel, and for the love of what was once the world’s greatest democracy, our beloved United States of America, I hope to change your mind from possibly making the biggest mistake of
your life.

Hillary Clinton isn’t a friend of Israel

In November 1999, Clinton publicly appeared with Yasir Arafat’s wife Suha and listening quietly while the token bride of the world’s biggest terrorist scumbag accused Israel of using poison gas and chemical contaminants on the water supply wells against Palestinians. In response, Clinton hugged and kissed Suha. Days later, after outraged fallout, Clinton called ‘FOR ALL SIDES to refrain from ‘INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC.”Although Clinton had to please pro-Israel voters when running for the Senate in New York, hints about her real mindset can be gleaned from a careful reading of her book Hard Choices: “When we left the city and visited Jericho in the West Bank, I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted. [p.302] …There has been nearly a decade of terror, arising from the second intifada…Three times as many Palestinians were killed and thousands more were injured in the same period [as Israelis].”

This equating of murderers and murderees, victims and perpetrators has long been the code speak of The New York Times and other anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bigots.

And before you point to this or that pro-Israel thing she said, please check the dates: Was it, by chance, between 2001-2009 when she needed the votes of New York Jews?

Because when she left the Senate and became Secretary of State for the most anti-Israel President in the history of our country, the façade got dropped like a hot potato. The first thing she did was throw out an agreement with Israel during the Bush administration, calling for new restrictions on building Jewish homes in existing neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Hillary Clinton is funded by Israel-haters.

But like the chicken and the egg, what came first, Hillary’s anti-Israel perspective, or the money that Israel-haters have been pouring into Clinton Foundation coffers? Or perhaps, she and her husband will take money from anyone, and it was just a lucky coincidence her funders shared
her views?

Saudi Arabia donated ten million dollars to the Clinton Library in 2007 and another $25 million to the Clinton Foundation in June 2016, while individuals close to the Saudi family Nasir Rashid and Friends of Saudi Arabia donated millions more. Clinton’s State Department approved a $29 billion sale of fighter jets to Israel’s enemy Saudi Arabia against Israel’s vociferous objections. Coincidence?

Dubai – The Clinton Foundation has established Dubai Study departments in major U.S. and British Universities.Qatar gave millions to the
Clinton Foundation.In 2014, President Shimon Peres accused Qatar of being “the world’s largest funder of terror: Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and tunnels which are fired at innocent civilians,” Peres told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem. Just this past August, Qatar pledged and additional $31 million to Gaza.

On August 15, 2016 Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to the Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed that Qatar was the recipient of approximately $271 million in military related export deals. During Clinton’s tenure Qatar was the recipient of approximately $4.3 billion altogether – a 1,482 % increase [in military exports] while Saudi Arabia saw a 97% increase in military exports.

In August 2014 Hillary Clinton wrote to her campaign manager John Podesta that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the area.”

Clinton advisors are anti -Israel

Clinton’s advisors, like Obama’s, have always been uniformly and virulently anti-Israel. They have her ear.

Sidney Blumenthal, Observer’s Ken Sliverstein, wrote recently, is the “ most dishonest, amoral political hatchet man of modern political times.” He is also one of Hillary’s closest friends and a highly paid advisor to her about Israel.

In 2010 he wrote her to “hold Bibi’s feet to the fire….” He told Clinton to “remind AIPAC…that it does not have a monopoly over American Jewish opinion.” Soros-funded anti-Israel J Street should be praised, he offers. In May Blumenthal wrote her, hinting that the raid on the Gaza flotilla was
deliberately organized to kill the peace process and embarrass Obama. Hillary forwarded this message with the words: “FYI and I told you so,” to her deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan at the State Department.

Blumenthal’s son Max is an even more self-hating Jew. In 2013, Max appeared in ninth place on that year’s Simon Wiesenthal Center list of
anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs, for equating Israel with the Nazi regime and “approving characterizations of Israeli soldiers as ‘Judeo-Nazis.’” This is what Hillary had to say in e-mails about Max and his work:

8.17/2010 Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”

4/7/2011 Will Max’s piece be posted anywhere else? It is powerful and touching.”

9/13/2012 “Your Max is a mitzvah.”

This is what the “mitzvah” wrote when Elie Wiesel died: “Elie Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a defender of those who commit them. He did more harm than good and should not be honored.”

As most of you know, because even the mainstream media couldn’t hide it, Hillary Clinton deliberately ignored her responsibility and the rules, and created a private e-mail server that left highly sensitive, classified security documents vulnerable to hacking by America’s enemies.

But Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote something which has mostly been overlooked: “The Democratic nominee obviously didn’t set up her server with the express purpose of exposing national secrets – that was incidental. She set up the server to keep secret the details of the Clinton’s private life – a life built around an elaborate and sweeping money-raising and self-promoting entity known as the Clinton Foundation. Had Secretary Clinton kept the Foundation at arm’s length while in office –as obvious ethical standards would have dictated – there would never have been any need for a private server or even private email.”

She had much to hide. Other leaked emails make it clear that under Hillary, the State Department took SPECIAL CARE OF DONORS TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION. In 2010 a senior State Department aide to Clinton asked a Foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with Haitian earthquake victims were FOB (Friends of Bill) or WJC VIPS (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs) “Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website,” Strassel concludes.

Trump is the only one with the guts to have publicly stated she should be in jail for these things.

We could forgive Mrs. Clinton many things, though, if we were convinced she had any core values at all. As she cheerfully admitted in a paid speech to Goldman Sachs, she takes two positions, public and private, on every issue, depending on her audience. She is for and against trade agreements that will lose Americans jobs. She is for and against Wall Street corruption.

Hillary’s Immigration Policy endangers your family

Hillary Clinton supports unlimited immigration of unvetted Muslim immigrants, which will fundamentally change the character of the US, and will endanger Jews, Christians, and ordinary citizens by exposing them to increased levels of anti-Semitism, ethnic hatred, and acts of random, hate-based violence.

All you need to do to verify that statement, is to study the statistics of other Western countries that have allowed themselves to accept a huge influx of Muslim immigrants.

In the British capital alone, anti-Semitic incidents increased by more than 60 percent over the past year, while worldwide anti-Semitism was up by 40%.

“Many refugees come from countries where Israel is an enemy; this resentment is often transferred to Jews in general,” a delegation of German Jews told Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year.For American Jews, who have much to fear both as an individual community, and as part of the larger American population, this is the last chance to actually influence this process. As an Israeli who got brainwashed by progressives to paint doves and let Arafat arm “police” and pull down border checks, and then almost got blown up during the Passover Seder at the Park Hotel, I am telling you this is a life or death issue for you and your families. If you let yourself become brainwashed and complacent, which is what we Israelis did, and vote for this policy and this politician with her appalling track record, the consequences could be horrible. Believe me, I know.

Hillary Clinton is part of an immoral establishment that is destroying America and endangering Israel

Let me admit upfront: I loathe and mistrust The New York Times, NPR, CNN, LA Times, Washington Post Politico, etc. all of whom have lied about Israel, lied about terrorism, lied about Wall Street, lied and covered up Barack Hussein Obama’s incompetence.

A victory for Hillary Clinton is a victory for them and the system they support and the America they’ve created: a weak, bankrupt, racially divided nation of too many homeless, jobless, hopeless people, weighted down by bureaucracy, preyed upon by white collar criminals, unsafe in their cities and homes and schools and unprotected from brazen murdering, raping thugs and terrorists – both homegrown and imported.

It has become a place where veterans are neglected and police are attacked and hounded by the country they give their lives to protect every day. A place where health care is endangered for all by a system that simply doesn’t work.

The establishment that created this chaos would like nothing better than a citizenry that is complacent and stupid, easily swayed by epithets and ugly but irrelevant sound bites .

I prefer Trump because he has never been part of that system. He isn’t a politician. He isn’t afraid to say the things we all believe about the rigged
media, the backroom money deals, the pay for play, Islamic terrorism, unvetted immigration, a border wall, and despicable late term abortions.

A vote for him is a vote against what has happened to America under Barack Hussein Obama and against the political, corporate, and media empires that backed him and brought him to power and want Hillary to take his place.

Look at the facts. Don’t be part of the Punch and Judy show, manipulated by the puppet-masters. Vote against the system. Vote against corruption. Vote for real democracy and real, not fake, change.

Categories: 2016 elections, Donald Trump and immigration, Donald Trump and Israel, Hillary Clinton and immigration, Hillary Clinton and Israel, Iran and Israel, Iran scam, Islam and Jews, Israel, Israel settlements, Obama and Israel
Tags: Donald Trump and immigration, Donald Trump and Israel, Hillary Clinton and immigration, Hillary Clinton and Israel, Iran and Israel, Iran Scam, Islam and Jews, Israel, Israeli settlements, Obama and Israel

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Column One: Checkmating Obama

October 27, 2016

Column One: Checkmating Obama, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, October 27, 2016

Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

wailingwallobama

Obama at the Western Wall. (photo credit:AFP PHOTO)

In one of the immortal lines of Godfather 2, mafia boss Michael Corleone discusses the fate of his brother, who betrayed him, with his enforcer.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive,” Corleone said.

Message received.

The brother was murdered after their mother’s funeral.

Last week it was reported that the Obama administration has delivered a message to the Palestinian Authority. The administration has warned the PA that the US will veto any anti-Israel resolution brought before the UN Security Council before the US presidential elections on November 8.

Message received.

Open season on Israel at the Security Council will commence November 9. The Palestinians are planning appropriately.

Israel needs to plan, too. Israel’s most urgent diplomatic mission today is to develop and implement a strategy that will outflank President Barack Obama in his final eight weeks in power.

Lobbying the administration is pointless. Obama has waited eight years to exact his revenge on Israel for not supporting his hostile, strategically irrational policies. And he has no interest in letting bygones be bygones.

Before turning to what Israel must do, first we need to understand what Israel can do.

A good place to begin is by considering what just transpired at UNESCO, where twice in a week, UNESCO bodies resolved to erase 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

The fight that Israel waged at UNESCO is not the fight it needs to wage at the Security Council. The stakes at the Security Council are far higher.

Like the UN General Assembly, UNESCO’s decisions are non-binding declarations that have no legal or operational significance. As such, there is no reason to expend great resources to fight them. For Israel, the goal of the fight at UNESCO is not to defeat anti-Israel initiatives. That is impossible given the Palestinians’ automatic majority.

The purpose of the fight at UNESCO is to humiliate European governments that side with antisemitic initiatives, and to weaken the congenitally anti-Israel body itself.

The government achieved both of these objectives. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s disavowal of his own government’s abstention from the vote on the first resolution – like the similar position taken after the fact by the Mexican government – was a diplomatic victory for Israel.

So too, the fact that UNESCO’s own Secretary-General Irina Bukova felt compelled to disavow her own agency’s actions by rejecting the resolution’s denial of the Jewish people’s ties to Jerusalem was a significant victory for Israel. Her statement was deeply damaging for UNESCO and its reputation.

Finally, the fact that Tanzania and the Philippines voted against the resolution was a testament to Israel’s capacity to convince other governments to abandon their traditional pro-Palestinian voting pattern.

The Palestinians won the vote at UNESCO because they are more powerful diplomatically than Israel. They have an automatic anti-Israel majority. But they weren’t empowered by their victory. To the contrary. They were bloodied by it.

In a sign of their weakening hold on member nations, the Palestinians and Jordanians felt compelled to send a threatening letter to the members of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee lest they dare to vote against the resolution. Powerful players don’t make threats. They don’t need to.

Israel’s experience at UNESCO teaches us that there are governments that are open to counteroffers. Israel doesn’t need to hide in America’s shadow. It is capable of working on its own to blunt the impact of the Palestinians’ automatic majority. And it will need to use all of its resources to fend off a US-backed assault at the Security Council.

Unlike UNESCO, the Security Council can pass legally binding resolutions. Israel needs to be prepared to bring all of its resources to bear to prevent such a resolution from being adopted against it. Obama’s intention to abandon Israel at the Security Council means that Israel comes to this battle severely hobbled.

But there is one advantage to the US’s betrayal.

Over the years, Israel’s ability to trust the US to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council was been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the US has secured Israel from diplomatic assaults. But on the other hand, our ability to trust Washington has made us diplomatically lazy and ineffective.

Safe in Washington’s shadow, we have behaved as through all diplomacy is public diplomacy. That is, we have pretended that statecraft begins and ends with making the moral or strategic case for our side against the other guys.

But public diplomacy is just one diplomatic tool.

The Syrian regime, for instance, has no moral case for securing international support. Bashar Assad didn’t convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to support him by arguing that he is better than alternative regimes. He bought Putin’s support by offering him permanent air and naval bases in Syria.

Then there is Morocco, another weak state with no public diplomacy case to make. Last March, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outraged Rabat when he acknowledged the plain fact that Western Sahara, which Morocco occupies, is “occupied territory.”

Morocco quickly secured the support of Spain and France and launched an all-out onslaught against Ban. How did Morocco manage?

Morocco’s most powerful diplomatic resource is its control over migration flows from North Africa to Europe. Anytime it wishes, Rabat can open the migratory floodgates just as easily as it can keep them shut. And the French and Spanish know it.

In less than a month, Ban issued repeated abject apologies.

Game. Set. Match. Morocco.

From reports to date, it appears that shortly after the US elections on November 8, the Malaysians or Egyptians will submit a Palestinian-backed resolution that defines Israeli communities in united Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as illegal. If the resolution is brought to a vote, the US will fail to veto it.

Such a resolution, or a resolution obligating Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, would cause Israel grave harm.

So what resources does Israel have to prevent this from happening?

Of course, we have public diplomacy. And that might work with some friendly nations. But it won’t get us over the top. We need to learn from the Syrian and Moroccan examples and consider what we have to offer Security Council members in exchange for their support in scuttling the approaching onslaught against us.

One such resource is the US Congress. Israel’s allies in Congress are sickened by the Obama administration’s devastating Middle East policies. A solid majority of lawmakers can be trusted to support actions that will reinforce Israel’s position.

Israel has other resources as well that we can trade on. We have natural gas. And we have technologies that the governments of the world require to surmount the challenges of the 21 century. There is no reason to give these resources away when we can trade them for diplomatic support.

As for the Palestinians, as the UNESCO vote showed, they are less popular now than at any time in the past 40 years. All they have to offer is threats and antisemitism. Both are powerful weapons.

But they are no longer invincible.

Israel’s goal must be to use our resources at the Security Council in a manner that will make it impossible for Obama to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass.

A method for achieving this goal has two components. The first component is to convince a friendly country on the Security Council to propose a balanced resolution that would counter the Palestinian-backed Israel-bashing one.

Such a resolution could include four points. First, it could deplore efforts to deny Jewish history in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Second, it can condemn the PA/PLO for their continued unlawful funding of terrorists.

Third, it can urge Israel to restrain settlement construction in areas that in previous negotiations have been identified as likely territory for a future Palestinian state.

Fourth, it can call on Israel and the PA to reinstate negotiations immediately without preconditions.

Israel has friendly ties with a few Security Council members, among them Uruguay and New Zealand. In the final weeks of the Obama era, it is possible that Israel will be able to convince one of them to submit a balanced resolution along these lines.

Obama would be hard-pressed to oppose such a resolution in favor of one that singles Israel out for rebuke.

But that still is insufficient. Obama can make Uruguay and New Zealand a better offer if he wishes.

And so we move to the second aspect of the plan.

If we learn nothing else from the Obama era, we must recognize that the time has come for Israel to stop sufficing with just one Security Council veto. Most states have several. And we need a few more.

Russia today is the best place to start our search for a second veto.

Putin is a dealmaker. As his agreement with Assad showed, he is willing to consider attractive offers. Obviously, Israel won’t offer Russia bases. But we do have other things to offer Putin in exchange for a veto.

For instance, in exchange for a Russian veto at the Security Council, Israel can offer Putin to lobby the US Congress to cancel US sanctions against Russia over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Israel has no dog in that fight. And the sanctions are not getting the US anywhere.

Putin might go for the deal for two reasons. First, by stepping into the breach and defending Israel against Obama, he will humiliate Obama.

Second, if Israel succeeds with the Congress, he will reap economic rewards.

For his part, Putin wouldn’t even have to openly side with Israel. All he would have to do is announce that in the interests of regional stability, Russia will not support an unbalanced resolution on Israel and the Palestinians.

If Putin supports a balanced resolution, Obama will be checkmated. His plan to take revenge on Israel for not following him off the strategic cliff will be foiled. Israel will have survived his presidency.

None of this will be easy. And success is far from assured. There are many more ways for Israel to fail than succeed. Our diplomatic weakness remains a millstone around our neck. But as the UNESCO resolutions showed, attacking Israel is no longer cost free. We are not powerless in the grip of circumstances. We have cards to play.

And now is the time to play them for all they are worth.

Categories: Israel and UN, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Palestinian Authority, UN Security Council, UNESCO
Tags: Israel and UN, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Palestinian Authority, UN Security Council, UNESCO

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Clinton Foundation Employed Senior Muslim Brotherhood Official

October 22, 2016

Clinton Foundation Employed Senior Muslim Brotherhood Official, Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, October 22, 2016

It won’t be new to have a Muslim Brotherhood fan in the Oval Office; we’ve had one for the past eight years. Fortunately, Team Obama didn’t have its way in Egypt and so the Muslim Brotherhood lost power.

It hasn’t gone away, however, and we should expect Hillary Clinton once again to back this anti-American, Israel-hating terrorist outfit.

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Gehad El-Haddad, the now-imprisoned former spokesman for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s “Freedom and Justice Party,” was paid by the Clinton Foundation even as he promoted the Brotherhood’s interests as ab adviser to Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi. So reports Patrick Poole at PJ Media.

Poole calls Gehad “the Baghdad Bob of the Arab Spring.” According to Poole, while serving Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government, Gehad incited violence, justified the torture of protesters, recycled fake news stories, and staged fake scenes of confrontation during the 2013 Rabaa protests.

Poole relies in part on Gehad’s Linkedin page, in which he refers to himself as “Senior Adviser & Media Spokesperson at Muslim Brotherhood.” For “Current” he states:

Muslim Brotherhood, Renaissance Project, Freedom and Justice Party.

For “Previous” he states:

William J. Clinton Foundation, Qabila, Industrial Modernization Center.

Further down the page, where he describes his time with the Clinton Foundation, he states that he worked for the Foundation from August 2007 – August 2012. Morsi came to power in the last month or two of this period.

Before Morsi came to power, Gehad served as his campaign spokesman. He was on the Clinton Foundation’s payroll throughout this time and during a longer period during which, says Poole, he held various posts with the Brotherhood. Thus, as Poole puts it, “the Clinton Foundation subsidized one of the senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood officials in his rapid rise to power.”

Once Morsi came to power, Gehad became an apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood’s attacks on the judiciary and the police. Poole presents some of Gehad’s apologist tweets.

Should we be surprised that the Clintons subsidized a Muslim Brotherhood operative? Not really.

As Andy McCarthy has pointed out, during Hillary Clinton’s time as Secretary of State:

[T]he United States. . .aligned itself with the Muslim Brotherhood in myriad ways. To name just a few (the list is by no means exhaustive): Our government reversed the policy against formal contacts with the Brotherhood; funded Hamas; continued funding Egypt even after the Brotherhood won the elections; dropped an investigation of Brotherhood organizations in the U.S. that were previously identified as co-conspirators in the case of the Holy Land Foundation financing Hamas; hosted Brotherhood delegations in the United States; issued a visa to a member of the Islamic Group (a designated terrorist organization) and hosted him in Washington because he is part of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary coalition in Egypt. . . .

Clinton’s closest confidante is Huma Abedin. The Abedin family has connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. Abedin herself may or may not. But her contempt for American Jews who support Israel is now a matter of record.

It won’t be new to have a Muslim Brotherhood fan in the Oval Office; we’ve had one for the past eight years. Fortunately, Team Obama didn’t have its way in Egypt and so the Muslim Brotherhood lost power.

It hasn’t gone away, however, and we should expect Hillary Clinton once again to back this anti-American, Israel-hating terrorist outfit.

Categories: 2016 elections, Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton and Israel, Hillary Clinton and Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Israel, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood
Tags: Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton and Israel, Hillary Clinton and Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Israel, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood

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